Changes Unforseen
by QianYun
Summary: [Light HPDM] Taking place years after Hogwarts, Harry looks back and wonders about Draco and the changes he seems to have gone through.


Disclaimer- Harry Potter and its affiliated erm.. affiliation belongs to... whoever it belongs to including J.K. Rowling. This does not include me.

QY- Wow! A first non-anime fanfic. Heck, a first non-Naruto fanfic. I'm amazed.

Anyway, this is just a small drabble to introduce myself into the world of writing Harry Potter fanfics. So basically, this is **pointless**, there's probably OOCness, it starts and ends in the middle of nowhere and of course, I had to add in Harry/Draco in there. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy this short thing, and please review this so I can know how I'm doing with non-Naruto fanfics. (Naruto is a Japanese anime (cartoon) for those of you who don't know) This is also a part of a mini-series I'm writing, just really a string of fanfics written for different fandoms with only one thing in common. There's a theme of the winter/cold, however miniscule it is... ::shifts eyes::

Oh yeah, in case you didn't read the summary, this is Draco Malfoy centric with a twist. It's in Harry Potter's POV! First person too!

And I'm not British, so I'm not even going to try to speak with a British voice. I'm an Asian-American and an amateur writer, so nyah.

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**_Changes Unforseen_** --- QianYun

The first time I saw him, he was a pleasant, rich, snobby looking pre-teen boy. A contradiction in and of itself, I know, but at that time, that was what it seemed to me. A boy who seemed to be in clothes too strict for him, his eyes a complete contrast to the stiffness of his body.

I was a small boy in a world where nothing was normal, everything was different and surprises came from every corner. At age eleven and having lived in the same cupboard for a major portion of my life, in the same house I had been since I was an infant, this change was astonishing to me. There was no doubt that I was able to go out sometimes, after all, I had to go to school, but even while I went to school I traveled the same boring road, the same steps were taken everyday.

Trips like the one I had mere weeks before that time I met him existed in miniscule amounts.

So for me, he was a whole new world.

After a few dazzling hours outside in the new world, entering the robe shop and encountering such a strange boy unlike any I've ever seen was an experience that affected me in just that simple sight.

He was waiting for his robes, and by the time I had stepped into the shop and approached the seamstress, I know now, that he had fully examined my physical appearance.

As he had told me, several times already, it was an appearance severely lacking any type of finesse.

At the time, at the moment he spoke, I was almost too fascinated to respond, but as was my nature, I was friendly I suppose, to a point. His comments took away the allure in his appearance. He was a boy my age, but he held years that were at the same time beyond mine and also before mine.

Another contradiction, but after so many years of knowing him and who he was, I know that that's all he's made of. Contradictions.

One thing I never understood that first time I saw him, his hands were shaking. Ever so imperceptibly, it was shaking nevertheless. When I met him again on the train, I was tempted to say that his hands shook in anticipation, but it never felt right to me. Years later, I finally figured out the reason, or rather, I was told the reason.

From the first confrontation that started our "rivalry", so to speak, to our last at the end of our seventh year, my view of him never changed.

But it was hard to change it, despite how it seemed, we rarely took part in each others lives. There were times of course, when he tried to trick me in some way or other. There were other times where I retaliated, but there was never a continuous boiling feeling of hate between us.

At least, not until fifth year. Fifth year passed me by with a blur of colors- dark, dreary colors that makes me wince each time I think of it. Fifth year passed with vicious, dark feelings, no one could've escaped the grasp of despair. but perhaps, I didn't try very hard. The end of the year simply dragged me in deeper and deeper.

It dragged me into the point where I wasn't too sure if the effort of trying to get out would be worth it in the end.

Interestingly, it was the sight, the knowledge of him acting as he usually did that gave me that extra push, or perhaps, that extra pull to get out of the pit. I had put his father to prison that year, but he persisted as he had always done. Proving that while his father did hold an influence, in a large part, the responsibility of what he did and what came after fell upon him.

It was in sixth and seventh year that he changed. He didn't become kind, he didn't withdraw, he didn't lash out against all those not in his house. He did none of these things, none of those cliché personality changes that romance novels would write.

But despite this, it was definite that he had changed.

Not that I knew, I was too busy trying to go on with life with my friends. Strong friends I had, and even stronger friends I have now. They were the reason I continued to move even after I escaped the void of darkness.

Even then, he was always at the edge of my vision. I was watching out, looking for any signs that he would turn, or in reality, go back into the darkness.

Nothing ever happened.

Days passed, weeks passed, months passed, and finally years passed. The darkness that plagued the wizarding world rose and fell within those years and he did nothing.

One day, when I asked Dumbledore of this, he replied with an optimistic answer. Perhaps he decided to join the side of the light?

It wasn't the answer I was looking for and it most definitely wasn't the answer that gave me the truth.

A while after that, he drifted out of my mind again. More things took precedence and he changed again.

Even years after I had left school, exactly what about him changed and how he changed remained a mystery to me.

But as I had said, his presence was pushed back and the fight came near.

And then, abruptly, the fight ended.

In a whirlwind of events, a flurry of action, Voldemort rose and fell to and from his height of power within mere months.

The "light" side remained bewildered by it all, but they never questioned it, and quite frankly, neither did I.

Six years later, the question was forced into my face by the very person who had faded from my mind.

He was not the answer to the question, he did nothing that utterly destroyed Voldemort, but he knew the answer to that question. And he told me. For hours and hours, into the night and back out to the day, he told me.

But what he told me, I would never be able to repeat.

Not because of the magnificence of it all, not because I was, am, under an oath. But simply because no matter what he told me, no matter how he told me, I was never able to understand. Perhaps that was where the beauty of what happened laid.

He was a fluttering presence in my life, banging doors in my mind as he came in and left at times and slipping away like a shadow at others.

The last time he came back, he never left.

Because from the pleasant, rich, snobby, pre-teen (and later, teen) emerged almost as what they would say, a butterfly for a caterpillar's cocoon.

Some people say that people never change, others say that change is inevitable, I have no doubt that they never expected this.

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"What are you doing?"

"Writing about you."

"Me? But then again, of course you would be writing about me, there's nothing better to write, is there?

"Of course there is! There's that beautiful snow drifting outside to rest softly upon the ground. Cold, bright blue skies with not a visible speck of clouds even though we know it's there. So thinly stretched, it's an invisible element that affects us all, even while we wonder where it came from. From the middle of nowhere to rest in places all over, it's..."

"You know, you're still talking about me."

A light laugh, "I glad you noticed."

"Hmm."

"But you know... winter really is beautiful..."

"You're only saying that because I came to you in the cold, looking cold."

"But you warmed up and winter is but a moment in time that merely repeats itself yearly."

"Just as changes come one at a time into forever."

"How right you are."

The End

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QY-Alright, that **really** was pointless... Barring that, what did you guys think? I would prefer it if you wrote a review/e-mail telling me. But I suppose you can always just rant to yourself about it...

And just in case, at the end, Draco speaks first and then Harry and this repeats. At the end of the end, they're speaking of the time after Hogwarts that Draco finds Harry again and tells him the whole story. In an attempt to weasel winter back in there, Draco found him during the winter still with, more or less, his old personality. And then he changes, but like Draco said, it came one at a time over a long stretch, starting from 5th/6th year, as said in Harry's narrative.

Written: 12/07/04 9:30 p.m. to 10:16 p.m.


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